The Churchill Trojans team sports checklist was completed Tuesday night.
The senior boys squad raced out to an early 11-0 lead at the Thunderdome and held on to scrap out a 56-45 championship win over the Hammarskjold Vikings completing the season sweep for the south-side school.
In addition to winning their second basketball title in three years, the Trojans also captured the senior boys football and volleyball titles.
“What can I say, we’re great athletes,” said a smiling Mohammed Syed, who led Churchill with 14 points, tied with Hammarsjkold’s Geordie Savela for tops on the night.
“It feels pretty good. Actually I can’t describe it.”
Teammate Kurtis Heidrich said they simply wanted it more.
“We all tried hard. They were beating us to the boards in the second quarter, and stuff like that, and we all just started collapsing and rebounding,” he said.
Of course, a word or two from coach Cory Keeler at halftime, after the Savela-led Vikings had pulled to within three points, helped.
“He just told us we had to help each other out on defence. Savela was getting a lot of open looks because people weren’t rotating out, and that’s what we started doing in the second half."
Syed’s outside shooting helped too, Heidrich added.
The teen sunk a trey to end the first quarter and push the Trojans lead to 21-10, then drained another in the early moments of the second.
But Savela hit back-to-back baskets, a monster on the offensive glass to close the gap to three, the tail end of an 8-0 run by the Vikings.
The third quarter was more of what the Vikings saw in the first.
Heidrick started the scoring and added three more hoops before the quarter ended and Churchill took a 42-33 lead into the final eight minutes.
Hammarskjold just couldn’t find the mark from the floor, while Syed kept dropping bombs, scoring five points on back-to-back possessions to all but put the game out of reach.
“I’m proud of these guys, because they’re all really young. I only have two kids in Grade 12, so it bodes well for the future. The kids are real happy. They worked hard all year, but they deserved it.”
It was sweet revenge against a team that finished tied with Churchill at 13-2 in the regular season, and seemed to have their number at every step of the way until the postseason began.
“They’re coached well,” he said of the Vikings. “They executed what they were trying to do. We’ve had a rivalry before in the past where we’ve lost a couple of championships to them, so it’s nice to kind of be on the other end this time,” Keeler said.
“But yeah, they’ve played hard and all year they’ve played hard two or three other times and they’ve beaten us, so what can you say? We just came out ahead today.”
Next up is a trip to either Kenora or Fort Frances on Friday morning for the NWOSSA championship.
In junior boys action, Westgate goot 18 points from Eric Mantella as they won the title with a 39-28 triumph over St. Patrick.
